Cloud computing infrastructure deployments are often complex, involving many kinds of information technology resources that are interconnected and interrelated in a number of ways. To ultimately serve a single end user, a cloud owner may engage the services of multiple third-parties resource and service providers to supplement the owner's proprietary software and services. Resources may include, for instance: client-facing web page support; back-end accounting, electronic commerce, and database operations; security certificate provision, support, and verification; virtual desktops and user operating environments; and specialty software applications. Resources may be hosted natively on “bare metal” servers, or on “virtual machines” whereby operating system environments for server or client devices are emulated by a host system.
The configuration of a cloud typically involves laborious manual configuration of individual resources combined with stitching these resources together with a variety of scripts written in languages specific to platforms on which the resources reside. Once a cloud design is completed, it may be iteratively tested and debugged via reconfiguration and edits to scripts, until satisfactory operation is achieved. At that time, image records of component resource configurations and setup scripts may be stored. These images may then be later recalled to deploy a cloud, repair damaged deployments, or to bring more cloud resources online in parallel with a deployed cloud.